Massive surveillance is making some Americans hesitate to sign petitions lest they be punished by intensified personal surveillance.

This is the result of the state's demonstrate practice of treating dissidents as "terrorist suspects".

The US is not close to being a dictatorship with one tyrant at the top, but that's not the only nondemocratic form of government. What rules the US now is a plutocracy — government of the people, by the flunkies, for the rich and their businesses. It steadily eats away at what remains of our democracy, while increasing the repression against those that try to defend it.

Thus, the fact that a one-dictator state is not likely in the short term is of less significance than one might have wished.